symbols7.tga.dds & symbols8.tga.dds banners

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Has anyone ever figured out why symbols7.tga.dds and symbols8.tga.dds are the same? And also if there is any way on this good green earth to use the extra space beneath the symbols in 7 or 8 (that same space is used in the others)? Others have mentioned to me that they think it is possible to have rebels granted faction-specific banners in the battle map, but unless 7 and 8 are figured out or some other way is contrived, I don't see how anything but the 6 culture-specific banners can be used for the campaign/strategy map.

Anyone got ideas on this?

[Laridus Konivaich]

I would bet that the number of culture specific rebel banners is hardcoded. So the empty space probably can't be used for anything? What other images have empty space? I think that even some of the unit texture files might.

[Myrddraal]

Don't the rebels already have specific banners?

I'm sure rebels in africa have elephants and insects as their banners...

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Don't the rebels already have specific banners?

I'm sure rebels in africa have elephants and insects as their banners...

Cities that are rebel and have carthage or numidia as their founding factions get one symbol (a camel I think), Egyptian cities (none at game's start) get beetle, Greek ones get the sphinx, Eastern ones get the hand, Roman ones get something, and Barbarian ones get something. So each rebel controlled province the program looks at the faction, then sees that each faction falls under a specific culture (of the 6) and the grabs the image for that culture's campaign banner. It must work differently for battle maps since they have individually named tga files. And that's why there could be changes made to make rebels have faction specific flags there, but not on the campaign map.

[Myrddraal]

So rebel flags on the campaign map are done by culture...

Well I don't think we'll be able to change that, its the kind of stuff that is usually hard-coded.

[Epistolary Richard]

Sorry Teleklos Archelaou I'm not quite understanding your question.

Are you trying to make the rebels use different banners on the campaign map?
In which case you want to go here (but I know you've already seen this).

Or are you trying to make the rebels use more than six banners?
In which case as Myrddraal says this is probably impossible.

Or are you trying to make the rebels use their strategic banners on the battle map?
In which case this is a question of where he can find the rebel battle banners.

[Monkwarrior]

Perhaps I didn't catch well the problem, but the way the game select the banner for a rebel faction is always depending on the culture.
The big difference is that in battle maps, the banner is coded in descr_banners.txt and you can make one different banner for each rebel faction assigned to a playable faction. You could have a banner for dacian rebels, gaul rebels, german rebels etc, and simply put the path of each file in descr_banners.
Unfortunately there is no text file (to the best of my knowledge) where the campaign banners are coded and the game looks for the appropiate banner in the corresponding dds file and position. If you find this codification, please post it here.
Mmmmh, another possible test is to change the symbols in 7 and 8 to be all different and look the changes in the campaign map. If somebody wants to try....

[Myrddraal]

If you wanted to make mini rebel factions with individual flags, you would have to have 5 factions of specific culturesm and 1 faction with the extra culture for all other rebels...

[Epistolary Richard]

What's the distinction between "culture-specific" rebels and "other rebels"? Isn't every rebel that appears automatically assigned to culture?

[Myrddraal]

Yep, what I mean is you would only have one faction per culture. Like this

Culture 1: One rebel faction
Culture 2: One rebel faction
Culture 3: One rebel faction
Culture 4: One rebel faction
Culture 5: One rebel faction
Culture 6: All the other rebel factions

That way you can have 5 specific rebel factions. Is there something to stop you doing this? I haven't had a look at the files yet.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Perhaps I didn't catch well the problem, but the way the game select the banner for a rebel faction is always depending on the culture.
The big difference is that in battle maps, the banner is coded in descr_banners.txt and you can make one different banner for each rebel faction assigned to a playable faction. You could have a banner for dacian rebels, gaul rebels, german rebels etc, and simply put the path of each file in descr_banners.
Unfortunately there is no text file (to the best of my knowledge) where the campaign banners are coded and the game looks for the appropiate banner in the corresponding dds file and position. If you find this codification, please post it here.
Mmmmh, another possible test is to change the symbols in 7 and 8 to be all different and look the changes in the campaign map. If somebody wants to try....

Yeah, that's what I was trying to do, figure out a way to get the game to recognize additional spaces in the symbolsX.tga.dds or a new one, to have more specific campaign map banners. But like you say there doesn't appear to be any code elsewhere that references this.

The biggest problem with having any one of the rebel culture types as a single "faction" then becomes the fact that every province of a certain culture is automatically turned into that "faction". It's hard to limit them to just one area. It really stinks that the battle map banners could allow this (say, a "seleucid" rebel faction - that might be called something different and given battle flags and a color for their own), but the roadblock that we run into is that the durned campaign map banners are holding us back.

[Monkwarrior]

Yep, what I mean is you would only have one faction per culture. Like this

Culture 1: One rebel faction
Culture 2: One rebel faction
Culture 3: One rebel faction
Culture 4: One rebel faction
Culture 5: One rebel faction
Culture 6: All the other rebel factions

That way you can have 5 specific rebel factions. Is there something to stop you doing this? I haven't had a look at the files yet.

But the rebels are associated with a faction, which is associated with a culture, and in principle this last association is hard-coded.

One possibility to create 5 strong rebel factions is to establish only one rebel faction per culture, let's say Africans//carthage, Nubians//egypt, Assyrians//eastern, Aegeans//greek and Samnite//roman. We can place these five rebel factions in large amount of provinces (5-10 per rebel faction), 1) north Africa, 2) Egypt and Arabia, 3) Middle East, 4) Greek peninsula and Minor Asia, 5) Italy.
All the other parts of the map would be ocupped by different rebel factions, assigned to the different barbarian factions (germans, britons, gauls, scythia, dacia).
But I don't know if this arrangement would change anything in the game.